Originally Posted by John Drake

I'll answer that question with a question. Why do you expect the entire populace to trust implicitly people they don't know and have never met with devices that enable anyone to kill massive numbers from great distances with little effort or skill.

Originally Posted by John Drake

Especially when these same people also espouse their so called "right" to murder anyone they disagree with enough politically as a major motivation for having said devices, and espouse all these rights with a single minded obsession overriding practically any other issue the govt may be considering at the time.

Originally Posted by John Drake

If by that you mean they wouldn't be massacres you'd be right, they'd be shootouts, and the toll would be in the 100's rather than the 10's and we'd probably never know who started it.

Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

-Thomas Jefferson :

November 13, 1787, letter to William S. Smith, quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy, ed., 1939

James Madison "All men having power ought to be mistrusted. Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its patriots to its ruin." - Samuel Adams (1780)

"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from the government."
- Thomas Paine

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
- Samuel Adams

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."
- President Abraham Lincoln

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Gee, where is that last quote from?

Originally Posted by John Drake

Even Jefferson's quote says 'the people' not 'each individual person, as they see fit'. And his is the ONLY one that even mentions violence and arms, the rest are all pretty obviously talking about the duty of people to participate in the governmental process, NOT the right/duty to take a gun and go KILL somebody if you disagree with them enough. And that IS what you're talking about. Like it or not, you're saying you have a RIGHT TO KILL SOMEBODY, but you don't and can't because, after all, THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO LIVE, and this is the whole bloody concept of rights our govt is based on and you want to turn it into anarchy because it makes you feel like Rambo or you just love hunting deer all that much.

Originally Posted by John Drake

Fuck reasoned clear expression, I just have to say something occasionally.

Originally Posted by John Drake

Even Jefferson's quote says 'the people' not 'each individual person, as they see fit'. And his is the ONLY one that even mentions violence and arms, the rest are all pretty obviously talking about the duty of people to participate in the governmental process, NOT the right/duty to take a gun and go KILL somebody if you disagree with them enough. And that IS what you're talking about. Like it or not, you're saying you have a RIGHT TO KILL SOMEBODY, but you don't and can't because, after all, THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO LIVE, and this is the whole bloody concept of rights our govt is based on and you want to turn it into anarchy because it makes you feel like Rambo or you just love hunting deer all that much.

Fuck reasoned clear expression, I just have to say something occasionally.

Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

Look, don't you wish the people of Germany had risen up and murdered every member of their government in the 1930's?

Originally Posted by EricOKC

Again, YOU are the only one claiming a right to kill someone, and worse, you're attributing it to others when that is your own delusion.

Originally Posted by TSGracchus

No, and that would hardly have been necessary. All they needed to do is not vote the Nazi Party enough seats in the Reichstag to constitute a plurality that let them form a government along with some other, smaller right-wing wacko parties. No murders necessary.

If the minority of Germans who did not support Hitler once he became Fuhrer had been able to off him, that might have resulted in a good outcome in that specific instance. If we can allow that ONLY with respect to the Hitlers of the world while still forbidding it in less-extreme cases, fine -- the trouble is, we cannot. And as horrible as the Nazi regime was, it pales in comparison to the results of worldwide anarchy.

Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

I was talking about after the NAZI part already came into power. Killing Hitler might have stopped WWII, but it might not have. Surely Hitler was not the only driving force which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

I don't think I have ever been more disgusted in my life from a post at a discussion forum.

I have lost all respect for you.

``The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.''
-- Samuel Adams, 1771.


Please do not reply to my posts anymore, as I have nothing left to say to you.

Now I have to go puke.

Originally Posted by John Drake

Norrin feels this way because Gracchus and I have dared suggest he doesn't have the right to murder people he disagrees with

And they wonder why people don't want them armed

In the ARW the colonies had elected legislatures of long standing and recognized authority and these legislatures were what rebelled. They had a mechanism in place for expressing the will of the "the people' not individuals. It wasn't one guy with a rifle who thought his taxes were too high or they ought not to be teaching evolution

Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

So, the only way the people should ever rebel against a government is if some legislative body approves the rebellion?
I give up.

You and all others who think like you are free to THINK WHATEVER YOU WANT, just as I am free to agree with the men who founded this country, who risked their lives and their property to create a new government of the people.

It is highly likely that one day our government will sell out the people, totally and the constitution will be abolished. What will you do on that day?

I doubt any of us will be alive, but if I am still alive and not wearing a diaper, I will not just sit idly by.

Originally Posted by John Drake

Well, yeh, or some sort of instrument which expresses the will of "the people", not just you alone.

Norrin, waddaya want? You're saying that if you feel strongly enough you have a Constitutional right to kill people? Lots of people feel VERY strongly that the government ought to make women wear burkhas and have us all worship Allah 5 times daily, do they have a right to run planes into buildings so as to send a message to our government? If not, then what's the difference between their feelings and yours, except as a matter of degree?

Or if you don't like that example then how about some guy who mows over into your lawn. Hey, some people are just INSANE about their azaleas

The right to take up arms and resist the constituted govt is not, and never can be, an individual right. The people can resist as 'the people' yes but if just anyone can say it's time to go off plinking at policemen, we have anarchy.

Jesus, what has happened to Civics education in this country? NRA propaganda is destroying civilization.

Originally Posted by John Drake

Well, yeh, or some sort of instrument which expresses the will of "the people", not just you alone.

Originally Posted by John Drake

They had a mechanism in place for expressing the will of the "the people' not individuals.

Originally Posted by Norrin Radd

I was talking about after the NAZI part already came into power. Killing Hitler might have stopped WWII, but it might not have. Surely Hitler was not the only driving force which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Originally Posted by TSGracchus

This seems very confused to me, Norrin. Earlier, it looked as if you were advocating the German people murdering all of their elected officials in the 1930s. Now, you're saying you're not sure if that would have been a good idea or not.



That happened a long time ago, when I failed to buy into your conspiracy theories.

But here, I'll give you another reason to be disgusted: I would also not have advocated declaring war on Nazi Germany prior to 1939, based on the knowledge then available about how the regime treated political dissidents, Jews, and homosexuals. I've stated this before in discussions on Iraq and whether it was a good idea to go to war with Saddam Hussein, but not I think here on this forum.

Nazi Germany is such an icon of evil nowadays that people often seem to have a hard time putting it into perspective. I do not approve of the principle of people being able to slaughter government officials, and since making Nazi Germany an exception would have required foreknowledge of its actions which could not have been available at the time, I am not prepared to make that exception. If we say that it was OK in the case of the Nazis, then we are also saying that it is OK in the case of any other regime, and that I am not willing to do.



No deal. If you don't want to read my replies, put me on your ignore list. Others may still want to, and I may still want to write them. If that bothers you, I'm sorry, but I can't help it.